The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that by 2050 the world’s population will reach 9 billion, which means food production will have to increase by 70% if every individual is to get an adequate share of food and hunger is to be eliminated. Food security is an issue that no country can afford to ignore.

What is food security? According to the Plan of Action adopted at the 1996 World Food Summit, “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” But do we genuinely under­stand the problem of food security, and how relevant it is to our lives?

TaiwanICDF works with the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction to bring technology from Taiwan to partner countries to help their farmers deal with the impacts of natural disasters and climate change.

Food security in a pandemic

The sudden emergence of Covid-19 in 2020 led to a temporary breakdown in food trade, causing fluctuations in food prices. However, even as the pandemic spread worldwide, food insecurity did not worsen. Associ­ate Professor Scott Y. Lin of the Graduate Institute of Develop­ment Studies at National Chengchi University argues that regionalism played a major balancing role in this crisis, not only promoting transparency in food trade, but also encouraging the implementation of food security governance in different regions. Especially in the three major regions of Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific, this ensured ‘open and predictable’ agricultural trade to ensure long-term food security, and effectively suppressed the rising trend toward food protection­ism that appeared in mid-2020.

“We are very fortunate to live in Taiwan, where the government has continually worked to resolve the issue of food security by planning ahead and stockpiling many important agricultural products. However, there are many places around the globe where people still struggle with food security.”

Although a food security crisis was averted, monetary inflation and climate change pose the next major threats to food security.

LinTechnology made in Taiwan helps Taitung’s NT$6-billion sugar apple and atemoya industry to deal with the problem of foehn winds that occur during the growing season. (photo by Jimmy)

Climate change and technology

“Extreme weather has now become a global phenomenon,” says Yen Ming-hong, director of the Technical Cooperation Department at the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF). “When you add in the unanticipated global outbreak of Covid-19, the world economy suffered a severe blow, and there has been extreme stress on both agriculture and basic infrastructure.” Agriculture depends on the weather, and Yen says that climate variability will soon become the norm.

Yen states that the most frequently encountered agri­cultural problems in Taiwan are mostly water-related. Although so far there has been no great change in total annual precipitation compared to the past, the grossly uneven geographic and temporal distribution of rainfall is deeply impacting agriculture.

How can we combat epidemics and natural disasters that strike without warning? The answer is one of ­Taiwan’s strengths: technology.

“Farmers are often defenseless against rapid changes in the weather, and can suffer severe losses.” In the face of this vulnerability, TaiwanICDF and technology ­agencies including the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) have been working together to address changeable climatic conditions and the sudden Covid-19 pandemic by enhancing the speed and precision of response measures. The technologies they are researching cover both “pre-disaster” preparedness and “post-disaster” recovery and reconstruction.

Yen offers the following example of technology use: “The key growing period for sugar apples and atemoya in Taitung runs to October each year, but that is also typhoon season in Taiwan.” These fruit are not so much affected by the strong winds and heavy rains brought by typhoons as they are by the hot, dry foehn winds that blow down from the Central Mountain Range when a typhoon passes over. These conditions can ruin the fruit.

“Research by the District Agricultural Research and Extension Station revealed the air temperature and dryness levels at which damage begins to occur. Based on these data, and using Internet of Things [IoT] devices, automatic temperature and humidity sensors were installed in the orchards, so that according to the preset threshold values, the system can decide whether to turn on the water sprayers.” Given the weather’s impact on agriculture, timing is everything.

IoT devices are being more and more widely applied, and the power of research into how to combine equipment with technology is bringing new hope to agri­culture.

Smart agriculture and disaster preparedness

Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture (COA), in addition to promoting policies such as the Smart Agriculture Program, the Big Granary Project, and green direct payments on farmland, is using technology to undertake breeding of stress-resistant plants, design more robust greenhouse systems, and create knowledge management platforms, in order to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events and enhance the resiliency of agriculture.

Post-disaster reconstruction is often the biggest challenge facing farmers, but there is another technological solution: unmanned aerial vehicles. UAVs can largely replace human labor in surveying crop damage, and can rapidly provide farmers with clear images and real-time data to make post-disaster replanting estimates and help the COA deter­mine relief payments and other forms of assistance.

Not only do these technologies make a huge contribution to agriculture, some of the software can be used to help people stay safe in daily life. NCDR researcher Su Wen-ray states that the center, founded by the government in 2003, became valuable in the Covid-19 pandemic as a result of more reliable network communications technology and the increasing use of IoT ­devices. “The disaster information network played a huge role after the outbreak of the epidemic. By adding in people-counting tech­nology, it helped in government policymaking and in lowering the risk of infection from group gatherings.”

Moreover, by using social media to filter and disseminate information, Taiwan’s technology enables people to respond more rapidly to disasters or epidemics. The data analyzed by Su makes people’s lives safer: “The smart IoT technology strongly promoted by the government since 2017 has taken Taiwan’s technology up a level, making possible detailed monitoring and measurement in four major areas: air quality, earthquakes, water resources, and disaster prevention.”

To learn more about TaiwanICDF’s food security related research, please scan the QR code. (Click through on Chinese titles for content in Chinese and English.)

What can Taiwan do?

“TaiwanICDF is drawing on the Taiwan experi­ence to support other countries that face adversity in agriculture,” says Yen Ming-hong. “In our foreign agricultural assistance we are specially emphasizing pre-disaster preparedness, mid-disaster mitigation, and post-disaster reconstruction or BBB—‘build back better.’” Besides helping farmers, the disaster data analysis models used by the NCDR can be of enormous help to people in partner countries. Taking earthquakes as one example, even a few seconds of early warning can save countless lives.

Technology and disaster response efforts enable farmers in partner countries to acquire more accurate information, so that they can make better decisions based on timely data regarding weather conditions and the extent of damage, thereby improving crop survival and reducing losses.

Taiwan has invested in disaster preparedness technology and software in the Caribbean island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, which faces alternating droughts and hurricanes, and has built four weather stations there. TaiwanICDF has also worked with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) to design the “Arroz Nica” rice information platform, which has helped farmers in Nicaragua to raise production of premium rice varieties from 4% to 34.6% of national output.

“‘Teaching a man to fish’ is a core concept in Taiwan’s overseas assistance efforts in the field of agricultural technology,” says Yen. The goal is to increase proactive participation by farmers so that they become the most important actors in the farming process. “Over the long term, as partner countries accumulate knowledge and learn how to use technology, they can escape threats to their food security, enhance their agricultural self-­sufficiency, and enter a virtuous circle.” These are the ultimate objectives of Taiwan’s use of technology to cope with climate change, and its inter­national collaboration in agriculture.            

Taiwan has invested in disaster preparedness technology in Saint Kitts and Nevis, building four weather stations to help local farmers deal with the threats of both droughts and hurricanes.

The Arroz Nica information platform, created by TaiwanICDF in collaboration with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, has helped raise production of premium rice varieties in Nicaragua from 4% to 34.6%.

TaiwanICDF assists farmers in partner countries to take part in programs that increase food self-sufficiency and help avoid food crises.

photo by Jimmy Lin